The Intellectual Origins of People’s Democracy in Postwar Czechoslovakia

• In Event: Liberation between War and Communism: Revising the History of the Czechoslovak Third Republic, 1945-1948

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the intellectual roots of the first ‘People’s Democracy’ government (1945-1948) in Czechoslovakia after World War II. Although ‘people’s democracy’ is traditionally associated with the Stalinist regimes governing Eastern Europe after 1948, its theoretical framework was qualitatively different from its Stalinist namesake and had been developed by Czechoslovak thinkers long before the involvement of the Soviet Union in World War II. Drawing on a variety of sources, this paper focuses on the role of three figures in debating and conceptualizing ‘people’s democracy’ as a new form of governance: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Beneš, and Jan Fischer. It will trace the intellectual legacy of Masaryk’s interwar efforts to make democracy a social and economic project. It will then turn to Beneš’ idea of a novel “socializing democracy” of the working class. It will finally consider how Fischer, in contrast, regarded economic and social democracy as a prerequisite for political democracy.

Author

• Pavel Krejci, U of Hong Kong (China)